Search form

History of Data Standardization in India

Text

The National Informatics Centre of the Government of India discusses e-Governance standards on their website: http://www.nic.in/services/e-Governance%20Standards. Here, they specify that the NIC is "playing a key role in coordination and steering the standards formulation process" in addition to some technical participation. They also explain that the Government of India has set up institutional mechanisms for the formulation of standards through collaborative efforts from the following groups: National Informatics Centre, Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification, Department of Information Technology, and other government departments. The established standards are published on the e-Governance Standards website of the Government of India (egovstandards.gov.in). There are currently policies on: Open Standards, Metadata and Data standard for Person Identification & Land Region Codification, Biometric Data Standards for Fingerprint and Face Images, Interoperability Guidelines for Digital Signature Certificates, Guidelines for usage of Digital Signature, Indian Languages Encoding and Font standards, Quality Assurance Framework, Conformity Assessment Requirements document, and Information Security Framework and Guidelines (among others). The e-Governance Standards website displays any published standards that are accessible to the public as PDFs. Some of these standards include guidelines for adoption of electronic payments and receipts, guidelines for email account management and effective email usage, guidelines for use of IT devices on government networks, digital preservation, and more. The website also has code directories for generic data elements that are common across all domains, specific to personal identification, or specific to land region codification. The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology set up the "National Centre for e-Governance Standards and Technology) as an institutial mechanism for e-governance under the National e-Governance Programme. STQC works as a technology partner with NeST. STQC was established in 1980. The Ministry of IT has changed names and moved around within the government of India. It used to be a part of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology which was founded in 1947. In July 2016, it was dissolved into the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. In 2007, the paper "Towards Metadata and Data Standards for Semantic E-Governance Services in India" was published by Devika P. Madalli of the Indian Statistical Institute in Bangalore. This paper "discusses the Indian e-Governance efforts and enlists its different initiatives." (http://egovstandards.gov.in/sites/default/files/Towards-Metadata-and-Dat...)